sins

Examine the role of sin (or transgression) in three texts that we have discussed in the latter half of this semester.

When reading The wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale and Hamlet I was able to see that sin was a very serious subject during that time, plays, stories and comedies were made explaining what a sin was and alerting people to be careful of committing a sin. Which make me remember how a long time ago during youth group we learned that the bible mentioned 667 sins, the whole group was amazed at how many were found, the person giving the devotional said that the reason the bible tells us what is a sin is to prevent us from doing them. A sin as it was taught to us is when a person commits and immoral act that could be considered a transgression against the divine law or bible. The role of sins as it was written by Chaucer and Shakespeare was the line between being saved and going to hell, each story as presented by them has a meaning, a lesson to be learned. Most stories seem to me were written as a warning to the audience, even though Chaucer used humor when writing his tales the lesson to be learned was still as strong as the one taught by Shakespeare in Hamlet. In the Wife of Bath’s prologue and tell sin played a big part, the wife was so lustful that she married 5 times but to her it was a normal thing, while in The Pardoner’s Tale sin was seen as something major but that you could pay somebody (a pardoner) to forgive your sins and be saved, in Hamlet the sin was vengeance and in the play it was showed how it destroyed everybody involved. Sin one way or another was the main topic in all three plays and made up 60 % of the story.

In the play "the wife of bath's prologue and tale" written...

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... go to heaven so he decided not to do it. Finally at the end of this play it was shown how revenge ended up being a killing spree, how we should be cautious before we also becoming sinners.

Overall, the role of sin in each tale was to teach a lesson, to prove that sin could be prevented and that each author view of sin was different. In The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, the wife was a lustful woman who just wanted to have the blessing to keep on marrying yet she also wanted to feel free of sin, in The Pardoner’s Tale, the author wanted to show the audience that sometimes we preach about the same sin that we are committing, while the sin in Hamlet was a different one since he was seeking revenge and ended up losing his life. After reading these plays I was able to see that all three presented different types of sins yet in each there was a lesson to be learned.